Engagements. Divorces. Break-ups. Cheating scandals. Three-breasted women. Let's face it — we've seen a lot this year. So much, in fact, that it's hard to believe less than 12 months have passed between news that Taylor Swift would write songs about Jake Gyllenhaal and the news that Taylor Swift had written songs about Jake Gyllenhaal.
So what else has 2012 packed into its already jam-packed year? To take a trip down memory lane, we've handpicked some of our favorite Hollywood.com stories written about some of our favorite pop culture topics of the year. Read and enjoy below! Sniff. Pop culture grows up so fast.
Uggie, Hollywood's Most Famous Dog, Spills the Dirt on His Co-Stars — VIDEOThe Academy Awards' other break-out (it's not all about you, Angie's leg), Uggie, visited Lindsey DiMattina in Hollywood.com's offices to talk about his memoir, Uggie: My Story, and his ruff rough life alongside stars like Robert Pattinson and Reese Witherspoon.
Brad and Angelina's Engagement Lets Gay Americans Down: Brian Moylan on why the biggest engagement of the year may also be the biggest disappointment.
Colton Dixon: 'I'm Honored' to Be the Tim Tebow of 'Idol': Lindsey DiMattina's interview with the seventh place Idol finisher proved Colton Dixon knows his power within the Christian community. Hopefully he does better than the Jets.
15 Villains We Like Better Than Heroes: As Loki entered our lexicon upping The Avengers' record-breaking arrival, Shaunna Murphy explored comics' nuanced and complex villains — translation: those who were much more interesting than their heroic counterparts.
The Hulk Problem: Lou Ferrigno on Marvel's Struggles to Bring the Hero to Screen: Prior to The Avengers, Hollywood couldn't quite hit the Hulk hard enough to turn him into a hit. That makes the original Hulk, Lou Ferrigno, angry. You'll like him when he's angry. Read his chat with Matt Patches.
10 'Community' Episodes That Couldn't Exist Without Dan Harmon: Following Community's Season 4 renewal, chatter began circulating that beloved creator Dan Harmon would not return to the series. Weeks before that proved to be true — the showrunner was replaced by David Guarascio and Moses Port — Michael Arbeiter mapped out 10 episodes of the NBC series that wouldn't exist without Harmon. Read it and weep. Really. 'Girls': A Show for Guys?: In the Spring, HBO's Girls premiered to less fanfare than chatter. Did Girls represent the new wave of comedy, or was it simply a narrow, whitewashed representation of youthful immaturity? Whatever it was, Michael Arbeiter explains why guys dig Girls. 'Brave' and the Princess Problem, Two Steps Forward, One Step Back: Pixar's latest, Brave also proved to be its most divisive. Was the film a refreshing departure from Disney past — centering on a spunky heroine with no eyes on marriage — or another example of the studio's inability to break from princess culture? Kelly Schremph talks to Women in Film and others about Brave's princess problem. 'Brave's Girl Power Problem: Empowering Girls at the Expense of Boys?: And, unfortunately, as Michelle Lee points out, Bravehad a boy problem too. Notes on Nora Ephron: In 2012, we lost pop culture greats like Andy Griffith, Dick Clark, and Larry Hagman. And then there was Nora Ephron, a woman that meant as much to pop culture as pop culture meant to her. Alicia Lutes' tribute to the late screenwriter is as touching as a moment atop the Empire State Building. Joe Manganiello Hints at a 'Magic Mike' Prequel: No butts (heh) about it, as soon as Magic Mike hit theaters, we were as drawn to the Xquisite club as Mike was to tables. So imagine how pumped we were when Michael Rothman talks to Joe Manganielloand discovered a prequel could be in the works. Magical! 'Spider-Man' Fandom: Why a Reboot Was the Only Answer: Matt Patches explored why, just 10 years after the original Spider-Mantrilogy debuted, there was little fanfare surrounding the latest reboot and why, still, pop culture demanded the sequel. 'Spider-Man' Star Emma Stone Knows You Turn Her Into GIFs: Spider-Man star Emma Stoneis aware of her place in GIF culture, and tells Hollywood.com and the Internet, "Don't let me become a GIF." In response, of course, the Internet turns Stone's interview with Hollywood.com into a GIF. 'Amazing Spider-Man': How Scientific Was the Science?: Could someone replicate lizards' regenerative properties to regrow limbs? Would any company be interested in creating web technology? And could Peter Parker really order scientific liquid on Amazon? University of Minnesota and superhero science expert Dr. Jim Kakalios weighs in! Will People Head to the Theater for 'Dark Knight Rises'?: In the early morning hours of July 20, a shooter named James Holmes entered an Aurora, Colo. theater during a midnight screening of Dark Knight Risesand opened fire, killing 12 and injuring dozens more. Talking to theatergoers and theater workers, Matt Patches explores trepidation surrounding seeing the film following the tragedy. Midnight Movie Screening Culture: What Happens Now?: Following the Dark Knight Risestragedy, questions lingered regarding midnight movie culture: Would theatergoers still be allowed to wear costumes? Will theaters implement more security? Marc Snetiker talks to security experts and audience members about what might change about the cult event. Seeing 'The Dark Knight Rises' Before and After the Tragedy: Marc Snetiker, who attended a midnight screening prior to learning about the tragedy, admits his experience seeing the film was far more carefree than those who purchased tickets after. Aly Semigran and Michael Arbeiter, on the other hand, describe the tension and sadness surrounding each screening of the film following the tragedy. Why Are We So Skeptical of Celebrity Couples?: In late July, Kristen Stewart took a bite out of Twihards' hearts when she publicly admitted to cheating on boyfriend and co-star Robert Pattinson with married Snow White and the Huntsman director, Rupert Sanders. The dramatic apology ("I love him, I love him, I'm so sorry") launched talk over whether Stewart's relationship with Pattinson was ever real in the first place, piling on similar chatter that arose when Katie Holmes and Tom Cruisedivorced. Here, Kate Ward talks to experts about why our cynical society is unable to separate truth from fiction. Kristen Stewart and the New World of Internet Hatred: Brian Moylan sympathizes with Stewart, a young actress that entered a gray moral zone (like many her age) during the harsh age of the Internet. The Three-Breasted Alien in 'Total Recall' and Other Pop Culture Twos Gone Awry: We love Total Recall's three-breasted woman — both original and rebooted. What we don't love is these pop culture trios gone awry. Walk away, Game of Thrones' three-eyed Raven, the strawberry in Neapolitan ice cream, and the wise man who gave myrrh. Aly Semigran explains why you're all not wanted. 'Breaking Bad' Cast Connections: 'Total Recall' and Other Common Bonds — INFOGRAPHIC: Bryan Cranston starred in the Total Recall reboot, while Dean Norris starred in the original 1990 movie. But you'd be surprised to see how else the Breaking Badcast is connected. Michael Arbeiter shows us the six degrees here, bitch! The Many (Unchanging) Faces of Edward Norton: One of these things is just like the other. In fact, all of these things are just like the other. Bic's Slimmer, Sparklier Pens 'Just For Her' Hit the Market: Bic's sparkly, slim pens "Just For Her"?! Abbey Stone writes about how the sexist line is just not write. (Heh.)'Fifty Shades of Grey': What do Authors and BDSM Experts Think?Your aunt (disturbingly) loves E.L. James' break-out BDSM hit. But what do erotica novelists and BDSM experts think about the digestible — but poorly written — series? Read here to find out what Aly Semigran learned — or just go eat your breakfast. 'Breaking Bad': An Ode to Mike: Michael Arbeiter's salute to Breaking Bad's seemingly immortal Mike Ehrmentraut, a man who gave full measure. Dean Norris Teases 'Brutal' 'Breaking Bad' Finale: 'There's Going to Be an 'Oh, S**t' Moment': When Shaunna Murphy spoke to Dean Norris about Breaking Bad's "devastating" finale, the actor teased an "Oh s**t" moment. It turns out he would be right — literally and figuratively. Leanne's Spoiler List: Will Finchel Get Back Together? Lea Michele Answers!: In early September, Hollywood.com brought you the first edition of Leanne's Spoiler List, your home for obsessive TV scoop. In its debut edition, Leanne Aguilera's column teases a Finchel reunion, to the emoticon-fueled squeals of Gleefans. Ryan Seacrest Is All That's Left of the 'American Idol' Brand: Call it Reality Show Roulette — singing competition series' incessant revolving celebrity panels. In September, American Idol finally announced its judging panel, led by Nicki Minaj, Keith Urban, Mariah Carey, and Randy Jackson. Kelsea Stahler talks to a brand marketing expert about how Idol's one remaining (non-Jackson) mainstay, Ryan Seacrest, is vital to the Idolbrand. Seacrest (can never go) out! Cable Dominates Emmy Nominations: This is the Year of the Small, But Mighty: Kelsea Stahler talks to Emmy voters about why small is so big at the 2012 Emmys. Turns out (small) size might matter after all. Are Some Shows Gaming the Emmys?: American Horror Story for Best Miniseries? Ashley Judd for Best Actress in a Miniseries for Missing? Brian Moylan consults the Academy of Television of Arts and Sciences, Connie Britton, and Missing's executive producer about how they're still playing by Emmys' rules. 'Modern Family' Spell Won't Be Broken Anytime Soon. And That's Okay.: "Who would have thought Modern Familywould win the Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series?" said no one. The ABC comedy, which won the highest honor for the third year in a row, earned scorn from some hoping for a change. But Kelsea Stahler explains why the trend will only continue. 'Here Comes Honey Boo Boo' For a Second Season: Internet Implodes: This summer, a ball of sketti-smeared energy named Honey Boo Boo bursted into our lives and created one of the the more vicious debates in pop culture. Was the series exploiting poor Alana and her poor family? Or was the series a playful documentary of a loving and accepting family? Either way, the debate will continue into Season 2, as Alicia Lutes discovered upon the renewal's announcement. 8 Things More Offensive Than Victoria's Secret's Sexy Little Geisha: Michelle Lee wonders whether the lingerie company really did cross the line with their ridiculous Sexy Little Geisha garb. Instead, she offers up eight other racially insensitive characters and things in pop culture to direct your anger at. (Ahem, 2 Broke Girls' Han Lee.) Facebook and Chairs: What Other Objects Is It Like? — VIDEO: According to Facebook's first ad campaign, chairs are like Facebook. And so are doorbells, airplanes, basketball, bagged lunches, Ron Swanson's mustache, and participating Applebee's locations. (Okay, we made those last three up.) Why We Can't Peg President Obama's Pop Culture Persona: President Clinton was the womanizer, President Bush was the doltish goof, and even Gerald Ford had a distinct (if inaccurate) pop culture persona. President Obama, however, proved to be much harder to peg for comedians. Kelsea Stahler talks to Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele and other comedy insiders about why Obama will never be labeled by Saturday Night Live, The Daily Show, and others. Shh! We Have Obama and Romney's Secret Notes from the Debate: Not really, but we wish these were real. Are These Quotes from a Presidential Debate or 'Real Housewives' Reunion?: You'll be surprised how often the line blurs. Take Brian Moylan's quiz! Smear Ads 2012: Stop Liking Ryan Gosling — VIDEO: Did you know Ryan Gosling is fueling one of the worst wars in the world? His words, not ours. See our smear ad (paid for by your boyfriend). Love By Numbers: The Big 'Bachelor' Breakup Barometer: In July, we were surprised when Bachelorette's Emily Maynard chose Jef Holm over Arie Luyendyk. And, in October, we weren't surprised when Maynard and Holm became the latest couple in the Bachelor franchise to part ways. Just what is the mean length of Bachelorrelationships? Alicia Lutes does the math! Boy Meets World Halloween Episode Oral History: Matt Patches assembles Boy Meets World's cast and crew to talk about the series' memorable and unsettling 1998 Halloween episode, "And Then There Was Shawn." As Rider Strongtold Patches about the episode, "I actually thought, 'Well, this will be fun for us, but our audience might hate it.'" But you didn't — so read about how the series and episode came to be and remembered. Why Isn't There a Female Equivalent of James Bond?: Why haven't female heroes grabbed national attention like Bond grabs his girls? Feminist experts tell Kelsea Stahler why sexism may be responsible for a lack of lady spy love. Adele, 'Skyfall,' and the State of the Movie Soundtrack: Aly Semigran talks to experts about the disappearing phenomenon of movie soundtracks in a digital age. Still, some soundtracks will never go out of style or age, quite like Bond himself. Does James Bond Have a Problem with Gays?: We salute Skyfallfor a surprising scene that implies Bond has flirted with homosexuality. Still, the scene hardly makes up for Bond's gay problem. Brian Moylan explains why.
'Twilight: Breaking Dawn — Part 2': Kristen Stewart on Bella as a Feminist Role Model: Is Bella a role model? Many feminists say no. But Kristen Stewart gives a Shaunna Murphy a different — and smart — answer. 10 Crimes Committed By the Characters of 'Twilight': Believe it or not, the beloved characters from the Twilightfranchise have committed fraud, theft, insider trading, and whatever the hell law that imprinting nonsense has to have broken. Matt Patches tells us why the Cullen clan should trade their Forks mansion for a prison cell. How Bad is Guy Fieri's Restaurant? The People Speak: Following Pete Wells' harsh New York Times review of the Food Network personality's Guy's American Kitchen, the intrepid Abbey Stone and Kelsea Stahler went express to Flavor Town and learned diner's reactions were surprisingly positive — even if Hollywood.com was saddened to learn the restaurant took their blue watermelon margarita off the menu following Wells' complaints.Taylor Swift Rumor Mill: Jake Gyllenhaal and Harry Styles Are Her Latest VictimsAbbey Stone on why Taylor Swift's game is getting old. Continue to be coy about your relationships, Taylor, and we'll never, ever, ever get back together. 'iCarly': The Best Sitcom Since 'Arrested Development': Michelle Lee has a point, even if that headline made you blue yourself. Pop Culture Dioramas: Art Inspired by 'Avengers,' 'Magic Mike,' and More: Pop culture art projects worthy of As, Fs, and WTFs!
Share your fondest memories of 2012's year in pop culture below! [Image Credit: Warner Bros.]
You Might Also Like:
20 Hottest Bikini Bodies of 2012: Megan Fox and More!
Honey Boo Boo vs. Kardashians: An Xmas Card Showdown

Robert Zemeckis is a blockbuster director at heart. Action has never been an issue for the man behind Back to the Future. When he puts aside the high concept adventures for emotional human stories — think Forrest Gump or Cast Away — he still goes big. His latest Flight continues the trend revolving the story of one man's fight with alcoholism around a terrifying plane crash. Zemeckis expertly crafts his roaring centerpiece and while he finds an agile performer in Denzel Washington the hour-and-a-half of Flight after the shocking moment can't sustain the power. The "big" works. The intimate drowns.
Washington stars as Whip Whitaker a reckless airline pilot who balances his days flying jumbo jets with picking up women snorting lines of cocaine and drinking himself to sleep. Although drunk for the flight that will change his life forever that's not the reason the plane goes down — in fact it may be the reason he thinks up his savvy landing solution in the first place. Writer John Gatins follows Whitaker into the aftermath madness: an investigation of what really happened during the flight Whitaker's battle to cap his addictions and budding relationships that if nurtured could save his life.
Zemeckis tops his own plane crash in Cast Away with the heart-pounding tailspin sequence (if you've ever been scared of flying before Flight will push into phobia territory). In the few scenes after the literal destruction Washington is able to convey an equal amount of power in the moments of mental destruction. Whitaker is obviously crushed by the events the bottle silently calling for him in every down moment. Flight strives for that level of introspection throughout eventually pairing Washington with equally distraught junkie Nicole (Kelly Reilly). Their relationship is barely fleshed out with the script time and time again resorting to obvious over-the-top depictions of substance abuse (a la Nic Cage's Leaving Las Vegas) and the bickering that follows. Washington's Whitaker hits is lowest point early sitting there until the climax of the film.
Sharing screentime with the intimate tale is the surprisingly comical attempt by the pilot's airline union buddy (Bruce Greenwood) and the company lawyer (Don Cheadle) to get Whitaker into shape. Prepping him for inquisitions looking into evidence from the wreckage and calling upon Whitaker's dealer Harling (John Goodman) to jump start their "hero" when the time is right the two men do everything they can to keep any blame being placed upon Whitaker by the National Transportation Safety Board investigators. The thread doesn't feel relevant to Whitaker's plight and in turn feels like unnecessary baggage that pads the runtime.
Everything in Fight shoots for the skies — and on purpose. The music is constantly swelling the photography glossy and unnatural and rarely do we breach Washington's wild exterior for a sense of what Whitaker's really grappling with. For Zemeckis Flight is still a spectacle film with Washington's ability to emote as the magical special effect. Instead of using it sparingly he once again goes big. Too big.
="font-style:>

It should be easy to write off Boy Meets World as a blip on the lengthy timeline of family-friendly sitcoms. The show opted for simplicity over a high concept hook: at the center was the "Boy," Cory Matthews, a regular kid who navigated the ups and downs of life along with his mom, dad, older brother Eric, younger sister Morgan, his best friend Shawn, romantic interest Topanga, and wise sage of a teacher Mr. Feeny. As a well-intentioned, by-the-books comedy, the conclusion of Boy Meets World should have spelled the end of the series in viewers' TV Guides and minds.
But Boy never disappeared. After a seven-season run and 158 episodes, the series — which aired its finale on ABC in 2000 — continues to remain popular. The sitcom thrives on DVD and ABC Family reruns, and has been reinterpreted by passionate fans thanks to the Internet's thriving GIF culture.
How did Boy Meets World's legacy survive? By seizing an endless number of opportunities in the sitcom formula.
One episode in particular encapsulates everything the show continually got right, a half hour experiment that was as risky as the show was heartfelt: "And Then There Was Shawn," the series' horror episode, which was routinely revived during the Halloween season (the episode, strangely enough, originally aired during sweeps on Feb. 27, 1998). The Season 5 episode was a teen slasher parody that still, in true Boy spirit, led to an important life lesson for Shawn and helped an audience come to terms with Cory and Topanga's breakup. To do so, it brought together the entire cast for a "whodunnit?" mystery through the high school that strayed from Boy's traditional format — not only was it extremely graphic for its young viewers, but multiple characters met their maker throughout the half-hour. Despite the episode being as bizarre as it was bloody, "And Then There Was Shawn" became instantly memorable for not only the TGIF set who reference it annually on Twitter, but for Boy's cast and crew as well.
So, in the spirit of the Halloween season, Hollywood.com assembled the cast and crew of Boy Meets World to discuss how "And Then There Was Shawn" organically came to fruition, an evolutionary process that started at the very beginning of the show's creation:
Michael Jacobs, creator of Boy Meets World: I was just wrapping up Dinosaurs ... I went to the president of Disney television and said, "In all of these shows that are being done — Family Ties, Growing Pains — you have your Michael J. Fox, your Kirk Cameron. Big brothers. But what about the kids in the middle? The younger kids? They have lives." We started looking at it, and I got more and more jazzed by the betrayal that happens when the older brother, who has slept in your room as long as you can remember, decides you're not the one he's going to take to the ballgame. He's going to take his girlfriend. The first date episode, eternal in situation comedy, as told by the point of view from the younger brother, is a whole different television show. So I thought, what if there's a kid who was an everyman who loses his touchstone, his older brother, and he's lost and confused in the world?
Jeff McCracken, Boy Meets World producer and director of "And Then There Was Shawn": Michael loves to write kids. That's his forte. He's tried to write adults… whatever [laughs], I'm not going to denigrate Michael. He writes kids really well.
Jacobs: He said, "I noticed that you like writing for kids." "I do like writing for kids." "Why do you like writing for kids?" And I said, "I like writing for kids because I'm going to have some and they won't listen to me, but they'll watch my television shows and my characters and they won't know [they've] been listening to me." And that's what happened. I have four kids and I noticed the lessons I taught them have lasted their lives, but they didn't get them from me. They got them from Cory Matthews.
McCracken: [Michael] had done My Two Dads with Greg Evigan, Paul Reiser, and Staci Keanan ... He tells the same story again and again really well. He's very good at tapping into the consciousness of the day.
Jacobs: All I wanted to ever do was write a show that never spoke down to kids, because I thought that was primarily what was happening in the world of teenage television. Let's speak up to them. They understand far more. When you look at what they're looking at, they're not tracking their generation. They're tracking the next generation.
Rider Strong, "Shawn Hunter": Michael was both the heart and brains of the show. Every week, sitcoms have two "run-throughs," where the cast performs the show for the writers, producers, and network executives. Afterwards, the Executive Producer will give notes to the actors. On most shows, that means five to 10 minutes of notes. Michael rarely did less than an hour. Sometimes over two.
Ben Savage, "Cory Matthews": Other people would be "la dee da" [when approaching shows]. I've worked on other sitcoms — and I'm not saying other shows don't try as hard — but with Boy Meets World everyone was so passionate about every aspect of the show. It stood alone.
Jacobs: Bill Daniels [Cory's teacher Mr. Feeny], who I gave very few notes to (nor did I have to), would sit through all of the note sessions. He wanted to be part of what was happening with the kids. In the beginning, he pulled me in — this is year one ... during the very youth-oriented plot lines — and Bill called me to the set once, and I was sitting in my chair and he said to me, "Michael, how long exactly am I going to have to sit by this little fence [Feeny's stomping ground outside the Matthews' home]?" I said, "Seven years, Bill." And he said, "No!"
Strong: He'd go page by page through the script, discussing character, theme, you name it. And he would reference everything from specific episodes of Taxi to Noël Coward plays. And he would quote them verbatim. I not only learned about acting, but storytelling in general. I don't think I would be the actor, writer, or director I am without those note sessions.
Over the course of Boy Meets World's first five seasons, Jacobs and McCracken wrapped their work on Jim Henson's Dinosaurs, earned a Best Picture Oscar nomination for producing Robert Redford's Quiz Show, and continued to develop new projects. But multitasking never took a toll on the show, with the cast and writers' interest in Boy continuing as strong as ever.
Strong: It's hard to remember all the seasons distinctly, but I think Season 5 was probably one of the most fun. Michael Jacobs had spent three years sort of coming and going with the show — he had been trying to develop other pilots that had all failed. But Season 5 he came back strong and I remember feeling like the show hit a new groove.
Jacobs: I had three [shows] on the air. I was trying to nurture other shows while keeping very sharp tabs — reading all the scripts, going to all the tapings — on Boy. The other shows ran or didn't run, and I was able to come back to it.
McCracken: Michael asked me to direct the third season, which led to the fourth, fifth — I started directing all the seasons.
Strong: That year, in real life, I started going to college — the producers of Boy were giving me my mornings to attend classes, and I was splitting my nights between a dorm room the school required me to have, and this huge loft I found in downtown LA. So during that season, I was entering adult life and figuring out how to navigate school, work, different sets of friends... girls.
Savage: We were growing up on the show. I was applying to college, doing plays. Moving on. There was a lot going on. But in terms of my commitment to the show, my expectations to Michael — that didn't change.
Danielle Fishel, "Topanga": We were all juniors/seniors in high school and had a lot of other things on our plates. The show was usually pretty good at evolving and some of my favorite moments were when the show broke the fourth wall.
Will Friedle, "Eric": When the show started, we were very young and still trying to find our characters… By Season 5 we were much more comfortable, which made the entire flow of the show more natural.
Savage: In a way, we had taken such ownership of our characters, we were so protective of them, that it didn't matter, really. We were going to make sure the integrity of the character held up.
Matthew Lawrence, "Jack": I think coming into Season 5, they wanted to add more to the show. They wanted another guy to bounce off Will. And to have a B story line. You had Rider and Ben, and then they had me to pair up with Will. A little fresh blood into a situation that was already really good. I was very happy to [be that].
Jacobs: Nowhere in Season 5 or Season 6 or Season 7 did we ever think, "We've already run the gamut on possible storylines for where the show could go." The audience, at least in my experience, was so appreciative of it.
Strong: Artistically, of course, I wished I was on a more interesting, cutting-edge show or doing movies that suited my own tastes more — things like the Richard Linklater or Tarantino films of the time that I loved. But personally, our set was a haven: an incredibly tight-knit group of supportive, talented people. And so when I think about it now, a lot of the reason I was able to handle my first steps into the big bad world was precisely because I had this secure environment that I clocked into everyday.
Running with the idea that, in Season 5 , the Boy Meets Worldaudience understood the format, understood the characters, and understood the rules of the show, Jacobs and his team of writers had the freedom to play. And play they did, lifting the basis for ""And Then There Was Shawn"" from R-rated horror movies like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Jeff Menell, writer of ""And Then There Was Shawn"": I was a film reviewer for The Hollywood Reporter. Their New York film reviewer. So [before Boy], I was doing freelance writing, kind of enjoying my life.
McCracken: Jeff is a great film buff. He's a walking library.
Menell: It was around the time of the Scream movie. That was the impetus of it. I'm the big film guy of the staff. I love movies. I saw Scream. Was very scared. And the idea came from wanting to do a Halloween show.
Strong: It was a release valve. With the dream structure, our writers were able to get away with murder. Literally.
McCracken: Once you've established the communication with your audience, the audience is willing to go a lot more easily. If we had tried it the first season, they would have gone, ""What the hell is this?"" They wouldn't known what we were doing.
Menell: The way the [writers'] room worked, ideas are fished out all the time. It's not necessarily your idea. You get assigned scripts. I did campaign to get this one because I just love movies so much. I knew I could write this one. Of all the scripts I wrote, this was certainly the fastest and the easiest and the most fun, just because of the nature of the show.
Jacobs: It was important to me that we would be proud of as many episodes during the year as we could. I would tell the staff, ""In a 22- or 24-episode season, it is inevitable that you're going to do a dozen really good episodes, eight good episodes, and four barking dogs. In those barking dogs, it is easy for us to stay up one night and put in some iconic moment or some B-story that will propel the audience to next week. It helped us serialize Boy.
Menell: Every script on Boy Meets World was a group effort. You write a script, it gets tabled by the room. But of all my scripts, this one was changed the least.
McCracken: I've seen scripts that have come in and were totally rewritten from page one. Jeff Menell… it was shootable from the first draft he wrote. It would have been absolutely perfect. All we did was add a few little things. Amped up the humor.
Jacobs: ""And Then There Was Shawn"" was right out of Menell. We knew it was going to be an incredible episode — and a lot of fun. What happens is, it invigorates the staff. We know we're having so much fun that the best of what the staff can offer [goes] into it because we know it's going to be an incredible week.
Strong: I actually thought, ""Well, this will be fun for us, but our audience might hate it.""
Fishel: It was exciting on the page. I also loved the fact that we were going to be allowed to break character a little bit and be a little goofy. Topanga was always so rational, so breaking that up a bit was fun.
Strong: We were a primetime show. But as far as the adult world was concerned, our show didn't even exist. Boy Meets World was hovering in this strange middle ground: We weren't as popular as other family shows like Full House or Sabrina, but we also weren't a crappy Saturday morning show like Saved by the Bell. And so when we stepped out of the box with an episode like this, it kind of felt like we were in our own little corner of the playground, and no one was paying attention. Which means, in a way, we were thumbing our nose at expanding our audience — and by definition, building a cult following.
The positive reactions to "And Then There Was Shawn" from the cast and crew were across the board. But there were obvious questions when it came to pulling off the intricate episode within the constraints of the traditional sitcom format. Shooting logistics were one thing. Finding clever ways to kill off castmembers — a pencil through a teenager's head or stabbing Mr. Feeny with a pair of scissors — was another story.
McCracken: There was concern from the network. They said to us, "Nothing can be graphic." They were all over that at the table read.
Menell: The dead Feeny was something we wondered, ""How are people going to react to that?"" But he wasn't dead!
Jacobs: I'll never forget something Jeff Katzenberg taught me. When he was at Disney [Katzenberg was a Studio Chairman from 1984 to 1994], I went in to him to speak about epic fantasy. His answer was that he felt it was extraordinarily important that the viewer knew the rules of the new world they were about to enter. That there were parameters that had to be set so that the audience would feel in a very stable surrounding and that they were in good hands. It helped me in my storytelling and certainly helped in the Scream episode. Rider as Shawn, through the episode, sets down the rules.
McCracken: We were going to do it in a way that was going to be fun. We wanted the shock value, we wanted to scare. But we understood that we had a young audience and we did not want them running to their parents saying it's now a horror show and they can't sleep for a week. I said, '""Look, here's how we're going to do this. The pencil is going to go in his head, but when he falls, he's going to leave a pencil trail behind him. That's going to break the suspense for the laugh."" No blood. If that doesn't work, I don't know what to do in terms of funny. The janitor in the trashcan, when he pulls him up, right before then we crack a big joke. We teed it up to see it coming. Making sure we're wink-wink.
Fishel: We were always operating under the impression that the show was about to be canceled any minute. It was always a surprise and a relief when it was picked up so we didn't worry too much about that.
Jacobs: As long as your numbers are up, there are two ways to go about [dealing with the network]: the way is to be very attentive and take notes. Or the other way to do it (which I always did), instead of making anyone feel like I was giving short shrift to notes, I'd keep them there longer than they'd want to be there. So if they gave you a note, you kept expanding on that note to the point where they would have to miss the next show, miss the next lunch, and didn't want to be there. I noticed my note sessions, by year three, got incredibly short.
Menell: Michael Jacobs doesn't back down from anyone or anything. If the network would tell him to cool it down, he would probably amp it up.
Jacobs: At that point, the numbers were good. Ted Harbert [President of ABC Entertainment from 1992 - 1996] ... didn't want to talk to me. [I was] a whiny and endless bee in [the studio's] ear. They decided a long time ago, ""You know what, as long as the numbers are good, it's better to avoid him and let him do what he wants.""
McCracken: The network went with this because they trusted us enough.
With the studios approval, McCraken took "And Then There Was Shawn" to his cast and crew.
McCracken: We did the table read and [the cast] all looked at me like, ""......wow.'"" They thought it would be fun. It was off the hook. But they didn't know how we were going to shoot it. Everyone was nervous about that. But I already had it in my head. As soon as I read it, I knew. It wasn't going to be shot like a typical show.
Friedle: I don’t think it was difficult for us to shift gears. Actually, it was probably exactly what we needed at the time.
Menell: [Jeff McCracken is] such a passionate guy. He was so excited. He gets a ton of the credit for that episode. You get a lot of different directors, but knowing he was on board, I was just happy. I knew what he would bring to it.
McCracken: By the virtue of us being a well-oiled machine, to do something like that, even with special effects… [the network] didn't know how I was going to do it, but I said, ""don't worry."" That was the joy of it. Inventing the way to do it. The week before we had a hiatus so that week they were building the set for us. We created fourth walls.
Strong: Jeff McCracken was an actor's biggest advocate. He started out as an actor himself and he made us feel like we could do no wrong, and he always treated us as equals, despite being at least 30 years older (and about four feet taller — seriously, he's ridiculously tall) than any of us. We trusted him with our very souls.
Savage: [In all the episodes] I remember lots of heated discussions about whether Cory should do this, or Topanga should put her left arm on this shoulder, or Rider should say this, or I should push this guy. When you watch it you don't think about it, but everything was a discussion.
McCracken: It was going to be shot like a one hour. Shooting it in pieces, special shots. [We would] still invite the audience to watch, but with only a couple of scenes in front of them. [The cast] got really jazzed about that, to shoot a show like a film was fun for them. We didn't rehearse it like a normal show — four days of rehearsal and shoot the fifth day. We had a table read, and the third day we were shooting. We shot right through the week.
Strong: The Scream episode was also one of our hardest. Jeff had made things very complicated for himself in terms of the camera coverage, and I remember him being super stressed out.
McCracken: When I was a young actor I did a Wes Craven film with Linda Blair. I had my horror chops introduced to me by a horror master. I love the genre for what it is, even acted in a couple, but never directed any.
Jacobs: There were a ton of differences in the show. It was almost shot filmic because it mimicked a film. There was plenty of it that played in front of the live audience. I'd say there was a greater percentage of pre-shooting that played in front of a live audience then we would normally do. We would pre-shoot 20 percent of a show — scenes that were difficult, scenes that involved action. I would say that show we pre-shot twice that.
Friedle: That was very rare for us. It might actually have been the only time that we ever did that. I completely understand why … We were laughing so much that it must have been a bit stressful for Michael and Jeff. We loved it. I really think it brought us all closer as a cast.
Strong: We actors could not stop laughing. I mean, it was a problem. We usually would break character to laugh once or twice an episode, but when we were filming the Scream episode, we were falling apart on every single line. That's not an exaggeration. You know how when you were a kid and you'd get the giggles and not be able to stop for a few minutes? That's what it was like shooting the Scream episode, except it lasted for hours.
In "And Then There Was Shawn," the comedy comes from every direction. Slapstick humor, meta jokes, even a handful of South Park references — there was nothing the cast and crew didn't squeeze into the framework of their horror parody.
McCracken: Michael is wild. He can go off and be as looney tune as the next comedy writer. But the thing that always pulled him back was the heart of the characters. What were they feeling? What were they experiencing? What was the arc? What were they facing? How did they deal with the obstacles?
Lawrence: The first two or three shows I had to learn how the set was run. Michael liked to have a real legitimate undertone to our comedy. The first three weeks was like a boot camp. I got 80 percent of the notes [laughs]. I was like, ""What am I doing wrong?"" It was me learning the way that it worked. Once I figured it out... We could have really serious moments in episodes that were not sitcom moments at all. Very real. And then the next show would be a complete spoof. I think Michael knows it works that way.
Jacobs: Many of the episodes had wild farce moments. We could have done this more often, but I perceived that the show, in its slot, on that evening, ran best when you realized the formula that Feeny was going to put something on the board. The cast was as adept at slamming doors and doing farce as it was at offering a very pure heart.
McCracken: Will Friedle was one of the funniest people. He does voiceover work like crazy. He was the funniest actor I have ever worked with. In terms of improvisation, spontaneity, imagination, creativity. He just blew me away.
Menell: He had Jim Carrey qualities. He was willing to do anything. We made him a little too dumb sometimes. Even he would say, ""Come on guys."" There was stuff we didn't do because we thought it was too ridiculous. He was just really, really funny.
Jacobs: For Eric Matthews, we started with a dependable brother and said, ""What kind of incredible moron can we turn this character into?"" No matter how much moron we gave you, you always wanted more. We were happy to supply it.
Friedle: I always said that you could never go too far with the character and the writers did their best every week to test that theory.
Jacobs: Will didn't understand what I found funny [laughs]. There was an episode I always remember, this episode where we basically did the Alanis Morissette story. There's a scene where he goes into the hangout, Chubby's, and [his girlfriend's] sitting next to him and he's listening to how saccharine sweet she is and he can't stand it. I kept telling him, ""it's not animated enough, not loud enough."" He said, ""But I'm telling this girl that I don't want her alive."" I tell him, ""Will, if you tell her with any sincerity, the audience doesn't like you, I don't like you."" He completely, wildly overplayed the scene and people couldn't stop laughing. The laughs were so incredible and sincere. Will learned that if the audience accepts you, there are very few parameters in a Jerry Lewis world that you can't get away with as long as you're not redundant. We did so many different lovely things for Will because of the one overriding aspect of his character: his incredible heart and love for his friends.
Friedle: Occasionally, Michael and I would make a bet on show night as to whether or not I could get a laugh on a certain line. I think he still owes me some cash.
Jacobs: Will could get away with absolutely anything. He used to bet me, ""Is this laugh track or is this laugh?"" And I told him, ""It's never going to be laugh track."" He decided to believe it.
Lawrence: I play more of the straight guy. I know that timing really well — how to set up the pitch for the guy who is going to knock it out of the park. Will was so comfortable. He's hilarious. It was a kind of synergy you don't have an explanation for. It just really worked.
Jacobs: One of my favorite lines in that episode is when Will and Matt Lawrence were told by Rider that ""it is the virgin who lives. The person engaged in sexual activity that is first to die."" Eric says, ""I'm dead."" And Matt says, ""I'm dead."" And Rider says, ""I'll get as sick as you can get without actually dying."" A giant laugh in the house.
Fishel: Our friendships made it super easy because we were so comfortable being goofy, having fun, and laughing together.
Strong: It was one of the few episodes where all of us were in scenes together, and so we were simply enjoying being an ensemble. But part of it was also just how freaking bizarre the script was. It was madness.
McCracken: We tried to keep it light all around it all the time. There's always a joke prior to the scare, and always after. When Feeny falls forward with scissors in his back, Danielle goes ""Aaaaaa!"" there's a joke to break it again. Once you get Kenny, and the pencil mark, and the screaming of Angela, that all worked to say we were going to take liberty with the horror film and we're going to spoof it. Having fun while addressing the break-up of Cory and Topanga.
Richard Lee Jackson, ""Kenny"": The cast was great on screen and off, I felt at the time like we really hit it off. They kept referring to me becoming a regular, but of course that was up to the producers. You could tell the whole cast and the producers had a groove with the show, which makes a guest role easy to come in and play my part — kind of like a pinch hitter in baseball. Just get up to the plate and take a few swings.
Jacobs: He was the fifth guy on the Star Trek pod, and he ain't coming back. Little rules like that make the audience comfortable.
McCracken: I think Menell wrote the first joke about them killing Kenny. Will and I on set said that, when he opened the door, [he would] give me the "howdy ho" reference. That joke was the gateway. To officiate more South Park.
Strong: South Park raged through Hollywood like napalm. I remember Will got a hold of one of the original tapes of their short film The Spirit of Christmas and we organized screenings for all the writers and the crew. So by the time the show was on Comedy Central, the whole Boy Meets World cast and crew were already complete fanatics.
Friedle: We were all obsessed after that.
Strong: It was the dark side of kid comedy. Everything our writers probably wished they could do but couldn't.
Next: Cameos and the Big Emotional Reveal
Another layer of meta comedy was added in the form of a cameo, a casting surprise that elevated the episode to ""sweeps worthy.""
Menell: When we got Jennifer Love Hewitt to guest star, that added something to it [too].
Savage: Boy Meets World was always having a whole host of fun guest stars. Especially with Michael, we would have interesting, old timer guest stars. Rue Mclachlan, Phyllis Diller, Buddy Hackett, Bernie Kopell — 50s and 60s and 70s comedians. We had an episode in the early years where Jim Abbott was on. I think [Jennifer] was going to happen. She was a big star and she was around anyway.
Friedle: I always had fun working with Love. Not only was she my girlfriend but also a close friend. There really is nothing like working with close friends. You know what they are going to do as actors, which allows you to play a little bit more with your characters. I remember how excited we both were when Michael mentioned that he wanted to put her on the show.
Jacobs: She was adorable. She was such a good sport. So cool on the set. Anything we asked her to do she would do and then she'd want to do more. 'Feffie.' Jennifer Love Feffeferman. She was very happy doing it. They were adorable together.
Menell: [The making out] was a little uncomfortable during the run-through [laughs]. We didn't know she was going to be a megastar!
Perhaps the biggest shock of the ""And Then There Was Shawn"" is its ending, a surprisingly poignant moment in the Shawn's character arc. At the end of the episode, the ""killer"" turns out to be Shawn himself, the entire madcap adventure a dream manifested from Shawn's own inabilities to deal with Cory and Topanga's failed relationship. The cast and crew saw it as a testament to the show's abilities.
Jacobs: I was very happy with that episode, not just because of the stylized benefits we got. How do you write an episode where one of the characters says, ""It is not okay with me, that the love you aspire to someday, isn't working anymore. And for that I will burn down the world."" And then you get that episode from that idea.
Menell: The fact that it was about Cory and Topanga's relationship, that was probably more infused by Michael Jacobs and the room than my initial draft.
McCracken: I have to say, one of the things we'd always talk about was, yeah, we liked the slapstick, we liked the humor. Norman Lear was always a great inspiration — All in the Family, The Honeymooners. There's always a great beating heart at the center of the show. Michael has a heart that way as well. At that time, our audience was very stressed about [Cory and Topanga breaking up]. We used Shawn as the conduit, the Greek chorus, linkage to our audience for their concern over [the break-up]. That was big for everyone. Shawn had broken up with Angela and it that was something people were already upset about. So the network loved it because it was dealing with what they perceived to be a great emotional through line. How we were doing that, they thought would be great because it would tie into Halloween.
Jacobs: There's a dichotomy of what the style was opposed to what the message was. The message at the end is that it's necessary for Shawn to know that Cory and Topanga are going to be okay or he was going to burn down the world. That was important to him. By association, it became important to the audience.
McCracken: And who was the killer? That was also the dynamic of the episode too. Figuring out who was the killer when everyone started to die off.
Strong: The worst was there was a kid who had been an extra with us for years — we had a rotating group of regulars who would be in the background in school scenes — who had the unfortunate job of being my double. Me in the killer suit. He had to stand opposite me for the final reveal that I'm the killer, and we had to shoot it two directions, so it would appear that I was looking at myself. And all of us — I mean all of us, even the actors off-camera — were dying laughing. I think it was the last shot of the night. And this poor guy who just wanted to get his paycheck as an extra, get the hell out of there, and maybe move on to big acting gigs someday — this poor guy had to endure take after take because none of us could keep a straight face, including him. Who do you think would get fired in that situation? He didn't, thank God, but I remember feeling horrible.
Savage: [Most episodes] we literally didn't go home until it was perfect. You're dealing with a lot of neurotic actors and writers. That's Hollywood.
McCracken: It was a great cast. I had a great time. I never cared to direct TV, really. But when you find great people to work with… it was really just a phenomenal time.
Strong: It's the one time I can remember Jeff yelling on set. And he needed to. We were a disaster. But by the next morning, we were all laughing about it together. It's one of my most cherished memories.
The rest is history. ""And Then There Was Shawn"" revealed the malleability of Boy Meets World and proved that when the writers and actors stuck to their guns, audiences would connect with the material.
McCracken: We showed the first cut to [ABC] and they couldn't believe how well it came out. They were ready to pounce on it and cut things out. But they looked at it and went, ""Wow."" We didn't even have music to it yet. Everything helped to create this special episode.
Menell: There was a little backlash. There were people frightened by the episode. So there was bad mail that came to ABC. ""This isn't the show we watch!""-type stuff.
Strong: I remember talking to some young kids years later and they called it the ""scary episode"" and they actually meant that — they were scared by the janitor. Our show was supposed to be for kids of all ages, but kids under 10 don't really get irony. They just see a scary movie.
Jacobs: That's going to be allowed if the audience recognizes it as a Halloween episode. You go a little bit farther and it's not a problem. If this is an episode that ran without that benefit, that would be a little harsh. Especially for a young audience. If you remember the way Feeny fell down... it was not farcical. He dropped to his knees and fell forward.
Fishel: I like doing shows and episodes that push the boundaries because I think the audience appreciates it and wants to watch that much more because you took that risk.
Jackson: As crazy as it is, I still have people I don't know message me on Facebook having seen me on Boy Meets World.
Strong: Over the years, the episodes people want to talk about with me the most are weirdest ones. We time traveled twice. We did some meta-commentary about our disappearing castmates during the graduation episode. We did an episode where Eric goes to visit the set of ""Kid Gets Acquainted with the Universe"" that mocked our own show and our own personalities.
Menell: You have a blank canvas, but you can't suddenly be a different show. The fans… and by the way, the hardcore fans of this show would point out any inconsistencies. 'Shawn would never do that!' But after seven years, you get the voice.
Strong: The Scream episode was our most free form and tongue-in-cheek. In retrospect, I wish we had done more like it. Hell, that's basically what Community's been doing.
Jacobs: What I think launched a sustained run for Boy was an incredible evolution of what you knew [and] thought you know to what you never really knew at all.
Menell: The only thing you get bogged down with is coming up with stories. Something new, something different while being true to the show and to the fans and to the characters.
Jacobs: In the beginning it was a kid show ... It grew up and all of a sudden people came. The cast was growing, the writers were growing, and the show was still growing. When the show was canceled [after Season 7], it still had some life left in it. But we had done everything we needed to do a complete television show.
Menell: The show grew. It became about Cory and Topanga. That wasn't planned in the first year. Then they started to connect and people liked that. [Laughs.] We used to sort of mock it. ""Who are these 19-year-olds getting married? It's insane."" But it built to that. A lot of the stories were built from life. A lot of Michael Jacobs life was in the show. Sometimes I felt it got a little too heavy, a little too dramatic. But at the same time, that's what gave it its credibility.
Jacobs: There were two conversations that I had with Ted Harbert that I'll never forget, where he basically called and said, ""I know this is fruitless, but you can not marry Cory and Topanga? They are 19 years old. Is this where we're headed? Can we discuss it?"" And I said, ""We've done our diligence. I believe if you look back generationally, the divorce rate is higher than it's ever been. Kids are getting married in their late 20s. A generation ago the divorce rate was significantly less and kids were getting married in their early 20s. Our grandparents got married at 19 and the divorce rate was about 4%.."" He's laughing at this point — Ted and I got along real well. So I say, ""You have a brand-new thing you aren't using: ABC.com. I'll make you a deal: Run a graphic on Sabrina on the bottom, 'Should Cory and Topanga get married or not?'"" And he said, ""We'll get 10,000 hits.'"" And I said, ""Let's see what 10,000 say."" In 15 minutes [after the graphic aired on TV], we got 220,000 hits, 98 percent of which said, ""What do you think we're waiting for?"" Ted called me the next day, ""Can you please marry them in November or February?""
McCracken: Taking a young cast like that — Ben and Will and Rider and Danielle — and watching them grow and evolve, was just a real treat. You can't ask for more than that.
Menell: When the show ended — I wasn't ready for it to end — it seemed like the natural time to end it. People go their separate ways. They go to New York. They say goodbye to Feeney. It was very emotional.
Savage: I'm glad we were able to do something for people that meant something to them. That's not easy to do this world.
Jacobs: In those [final] years, there was a woman who stopped me in the street. Somehow she knew me, which was odd because I'm not an on-camera person. She said, ""Are you Michael?"" And I said, ""I am."" This woman was 40 or 42 years old. And she put her hand on my shoulder and she said, ""I want to thank you."" I said, ""You're welcome... for what?"" She said, ""My father was a school janitor."" And she turned and walked away. She was referring to the episode where Chet Hunter, in order to stay in town longer than he ever has, takes a job as the janitor in the high school. The kids make tremendous sport of Shawn. And Shawn, at the end, is mopping the floor with Chet and there's a bond between Shawn and Chet that hadn't been there before. A precursor to Shawn suffering the death of his father later in the series. My point is, when you get stopped on the street and someone thanks you... there was never a day where I walked into that writer's room, or any of us, and didn't realize we were lucky and doing something worthwhile.
[Photo Credit: ABC (11)]
Follow Matt Patches on Twitter @misterpatches

Melissa Rycroft is flying high after two weeks of soaring scores on Dancing With the Stars' all-stars season, but there's one thing weighing heavily on her mind: being away from her family. Rycroft opened up to Hollywood.com in the week after her highly praised jive about her "breakdown" in the rehearsal studio and the challenges of being away from her husband, Tye Strickland, and infant daughter Ava.
"Last week I had my first breakdown," Rycroft tells Hollywood.com. "Tye and Ava had come in Friday through Tuesday and then they left and were going to come back the following Friday. And Ava didn't adjust well when she was here. The time change threw her off, it was a different home, she was going with me to the studio and back. And then when she got back to Dallas she was off. Talking to Tye just broke me to where I was like, 'What are we doing and how do we fix this? Because if she's not okay, then I'm not okay. So we either need a formula where you guys are out here all the time or we are starting to go back to Dallas, me and Tony [Dovolani].' And I think it was a 30 minute breakdown in practice."
With her family at the forefront of her mind, Rycroft is resolved to find a balance between her crazy DWTS schedule and being a mom. "But we are fixing the situation," Rycroft says. "If Tony and I make it after this week then we'll start going back and forth to Dallas to make things easier on [Ava]."
Rycroft says she asked fellow DWTS contestant Emmitt Smith, who already commutes between Dallas and L.A. so he can spend more time with his family, for advice. "I decided after talking with Emmitt about it, because Emmitt does it for his kids, he's got five of them, and he said, 'I wouldn't trade it for anything. I get to sleep in my bed every night and see my kids every night and then hop on a plane and get some sleep for a few hours when I head to L.A.' And I went, you know what, I can do that. It'll give me peace of mind," says Rycroft.
"It's hard trying to keep a balance," Rycroft sums up. "This is really the first big thing I've done work-wise since having Ava. And so it's finding that balance and juggle and trying not to feel selfish for wanting to do things. We'll get there. Every working mom does it. We'll get there."
In the meantime, Rycroft is keeping her eye on the prize. And, selfless as always, she wants a win for her partner, Tony Dovolani, just as badly as she wants it for herself. "I know how badly he wants this, I know it's been 14 seasons and he's only made it to the finals I think two or three times, so I want that for him," she says. "But then I also want it for me, just to kind of prove you can still do it. So many things have changed in my life in the past three years but you can still do this."
So who does Rycroft think stands between herself and Dovolani and the trophy? "Oh my God, all of them!"
"It's no secret that Sabrina [Bryan] and Louis [van Amstel] have come out and just rocked it. Technically, they are going to be a very tough couple to beat. And then you've got Shawn [Johnson] and Derek [Hough] who, you can't beat the cute appeal that they have. Emmitt and Cheryl [Burke] have the personality and pizzazz and Gilles [Marini] has the sexiness," says Rycroft. "So you look at all of them going, 'Jeez, they're all going to be so hard to beat because they all have such different things that I don't necessarily have.' But I also know that I have things that they don't necessarily have, so it's really going to be interesting."
Rycroft hopes that Monday night's samba will have what it takes to put her and Dovolani in the lead. "I like samba much more than I like jive," she explains. "I think samba is a great dance for Tony and me, because we can go out and show the fun personality. It's a fun dance, it's the party dance, and we got a 30 back in Season 8 on our samba. So I'm really excited about getting to do it this week."
Follow Abbey Stone on Twitter @abbeystone
[Photo Credit: Adam Taylor/ABC]
More:
'Dancing With The Stars: All-Stars': The Second Eliminated Couple Is...
'Dancing With the Stars: All-Stars' Recap: Bye Bye Bye!
'Dancing With the Stars: All-Stars' Recap: Rydell High's Accidental 60th Reunion

It was the trickle of pee heard around the world. Cannes attendees were aghast and/or amused an infamous scene from The Paperboy that shows Nicole Kidman urinating on Zac Efron; this is apparently a great salve for jellyfish burns which were covering our Ken Doll-like protagonist. (In fact the term protagonist should be used very loosely for Efron's character Jack who is mostly acted upon than active throughout.)
Lurid! Sexy! Perverse! Trashy! Whether or not it's actually effective is overshadowed by all the hubbub that's attached itself to the movie for better or worse. In fact the movie is all of these things — but that's actually not a compliment. What could have become somethingmemorable is jaw-droppingly bad (when it's not hilarious). Director Lee Daniels uses a few different visual styles throughout from a stark black and white palette for a crime scene recreation at the beginning to a '70s porno aesthetic that oscillates between psychedelic and straight-up sweaty with an emphasis on Efron's tighty-whiteys. This only enhances the sloppiness of the script which uses lines like narrator/housekeeper/nanny Anita's (Macy Gray) "You ain't tired enough to be retired " to conjure up the down-home wisdom of the South. Despite Gray's musical talents she is not a good choice for a narrator or an actor for that matter. In a way — insofar as they're perhaps the only female characters given a chunk of screen time — her foil is Charlotte Bless Nicole Kidman's character. Anita is the mother figure who wears as we see in an early scene control-top pantyhose whereas Charlotte is all clam diggers and Barbie doll make-up. Or as Anita puts it "an oversexed Barbie doll."
The slapdash plot is that Jack's older brother Ward (Matthew McConaughey) comes back to town with his colleague Yardley (David Oyelowo) to investigate the case of a death row criminal named Hillary Van Wetter. Yardley is black and British which seems to confuse many of the people he meets in this backwoods town. Hillary (John Cusack) hidden under a mop of greasy black hair) is a slack-jawed yokel who could care less if he's going to be killed for a crime he might or might not have committed. He is way more interested in his bride-to-be Charlotte who has fallen in love with him through letters — this is her thing apparently writing letters and falling in love with inmates — and has rushed to help Ward and Yardley free her man. In the meantime we're subjected to at least one simulated sex scene that will haunt your dreams forever. Besides Hillary's shortcomings as a character that could rustle up any sort of empathy the case itself is so boring it begs the question why a respected journalist would be interested enough to pursue it.
The rest of the movie is filled with longing an attempt to place any the story in some sort of social context via class and race even more Zac Efron's underwear sexual violence alligator innards swamp people in comically ramshackle homes and a glimpse of one glistening McConaughey 'tock. Harmony Korine called and he wants his Gummo back.
It's probably tantalizing for this cast to take on "serious" "edgy" work by an Oscar-nominated director. Cusack ditched his boombox blasting "In Your Eyes" long ago and Efron's been trying to shed his squeaky clean image for so long that he finally dropped a condom on the red carpet for The Lorax so we'd know he's not smooth like a Ken doll despite how he was filmed by Daniels. On the other hand Nicole Kidman has been making interesting and varied career choices for years so it's confounding why she'd be interested in a one-dimensional character like Charlotte. McConaughey's on a roll and like the rest of the cast he's got plenty of interesting projects worth watching so this probably won't slow him down. Even Daniels is already shooting a new film The Butler as we can see from Oprah's dazzling Instagram feed. It's as if they all want to put The Paperboy behind them as soon as possible. It's hard to blame them.

Over the next few months, we’ll see new series soar, old series sour, and so much Jersey Shore madness, we’ll want to shower. Let’s face it: The Fall TV season is intimidating. With dozens of new and returning shows hitting our small screens, we know we have some big choices to make. So, to help you determine what to watch, we’re digging deep into the most notable series premiering this season. Where did each show leave off? Where is it headed? And who should you watch it with? Next up is ABC's submarine show that definitely isn't the same as Lost, okay? Last Resort sails into its Thursday night slot Sept. 27, and we'll let you know just what kind of training you'll need before diving in. New show: Last Resort Network: ABC Premiere Date: Sept. 27 at 8 PM ET Stars (including Scott Speedman, in case you missed that): Some of us have been waiting to see Ben Covington (thief of Felicity’s fragile, baby bird of a heart) return to TV, and now he has. Welcome aboard, Mr. Speedman. Also, Andre Braugher of the now defunct Men of a Certain Age stars with support from Autumn Reeser and Robert Patrick, an appearance from Glee’s beloved Karofsky (Max Adler), and a handful of other folks whose names we’ve yet to learn. Street TV Cred: It’s from Shawn Ryan, the TV wizard who brought us The Shield and the fantastic, yet wildly undervalued, Terriers. He knows his way around a good drama. What you’ll have to give up to watch it: It airs on Thursday night at 8 PM, also known as one the toughest slots on television. Your DVR only allows you to record two shows, so what’s going to get the boot? Last Resort is up against five network series: 30 Rock (Weekend Update until the election), Up All Night, The X Factor, The Big Bang Theory, and Two and a Half Men. You’re going to need some time to think about this. I’m going to give you a minute while the rest of us enjoy this GIF: So it’s about a submarine? What else?: Well, there’s a crew on the submarine. They’ve all got their individual problems, but no one has bigger problems than XO Sam Kendall (Speedman) and Captain Marcus Chaplain. Sam is unbearably separated from his brand-new, adorable wife and Marcus just lost his son, and of course both of them are faced with a challenge when the sub receives a questionable order to fire on Pakistan. Cue the disconnect between the upper eschelon of government commands and the crew of the U.S.S. Colorado. And it’s not long before the U.S. gives Sam and Marcus an excuse to start their own rebellion on a faraway island. That’s really all the information you should really know before getting into it; twisting your brain into a pretzel as you learn everything else is half the fun! Imma let you finish, but: Before you decide you don’t like it because it’s “super leftist because the sub crew is fighting the government” or “far right because it’s a commentary on how unhappy we are with the current (ahem, Obama) administration,” just stop. The series doesn’t take a political stance, but rather a human stance: Something up top isn’t working, so maybe we can fix it. Now, whether or not that is possible is a fate to be seen, but then again, that’s kind of the point. "Fashion" moment: Dudes (i.e. Speedman) look great in blue camou. Take heed, men. Wine and cheese pairing: Is there such a thing as military issue booze? Probably not. So try whatever run-of-the-mill red wine you can find and some sort of inoffensive cheese – something that a crew of navy guys could get into, like cheddar or pepper jack. Keep it simple, you’ll need most of your brain power to figure out how all these plot pieces fit together anyway. Who to watch with: Do you have a relative who was in the Navy? A neighbor? A friend who plays a lot of Call of Duty? Close enough. Invite them over. You’re going to have some questions. Who NOT to watch with: Any friend who often uses the phrase “It’s just a TV show” to justify blabbing over important dialogue. There’s a lot of it. How to justify watching: “This will all make sense eventually, right?” Also acceptable: "But Scott Speedman's in it!" What to wear while watching it: A snuggie. This is not a social event show. You won’t be inviting people over for cosmos and a little Last Resort after a gourmet dinner of foie gras and figs in a balsamic reduction. Go ahead, put on your sweats. You know you’ve been thinking about it all day. What to yell at the TV: “Wait, what? What’s going on?” And then, to yourself: “SHHHHH” because the next important plot point is about to be revealed. Cringeworthy moment: Washington lobbyist, Kylie Sinclair (Autumn Reeser), making out with and straddling a nameless, hot guy in her underwear while describing the capabilities of the U.S.S. Colorado submarine like she’s talking dirty. Nothing gets a person all revved up like a giant, sandwich-shaped vehicle sending sonar pings into the watery abyss, right? Character to know: Did we mention Scott Speedman is on this show? And that he’s in charge and pining after his gorgeous wife who’s waiting for him back in the good ol’ U.S. of A? (Okay, okay. I'll stop.) Word to the wise: Seriously. When I say the plot is complicated, I mean it’s complicated. It’s got more moving pieces than a Transformer. My advice? Come into this show mentally prepared to listen, watch, and absorb. Put down the iPad (the half-naked lady who shows up in the first five minutes in will help), close your laptop, tell the friend you’re texting you’re going to be busy for an hour, and actually watch the episode. Otherwise, you don’t stand a chance of really understanding what this show’s about. Facial expression while watching: Follow Kelsea on Twitter @KelseaStahler [Photo Credit: Mario Perez/ABC] More: 'Last Resort' EPs on 'Lost' Comparisons and Scott Speedman Romance Fun with Ratings: 'Vegas' Gamble Pays Off For CBS, No Luck For 'Mindy' and 'Ben &amp; Kate' Get Ready for Tonight's Alien Invasion of 'The Neighbors' on ABC

A cop with a delinquent past relocates to an overly posh LA suburb to help solve his best friend’s murder. Sounding familiar? If it doesn’t, then sorry — but we really don’t think this friendship is working out. Sources close to the network confirm that Eddie Murphy’s big screen hit Beverly Hills Cop is coming to CBS, but of course there’s a twist.
The three BHC movies chronicle the adventures of Axel Foley (Murphy), a wise-cracking Detroit detective who moves to Beverly Hills to take down America’s most wealthy wanted. But, as Deadline reports, the new show (created by The Shield’s Shawn Ryan), will showcase Axel’s son Aaron as he defeats the new criminals of 90210, all while trying not to be compared to his iconic father. And to answer your burning question — yes! Murphy will reprise his role as Axel in the pilot and he may recur if the pilot gets picked up for a series.Since plans for a fourth movie were squashed, Murphy has been trying to get the series rolling for over a year now. Beverly Hills Cop was pitched to all four major networks last week and it looks like CBS called dibs the quickest. This show definitely fits into CBS’s niche of light procedurals, à la NCIS, The Mentalist, Hawaii Five-O, and their newest stab at franchise-turned-show Elementary. Sheesh, that’s a lot of crime that needs solving.Are you excited to see Eddie Murphy fighting the bad guys again? Think you’ll tune in to Beverly Hills Cop: The Series? Talk about it in the comments below! Follow Leanne on Twitter @LeanneAguilera[Photo Credit: Paramount Pictures]MORE: TV Tidbits: Bryan Cranston Trades New Mexico for New York, 'American Horror' Gives Us Something... TV Tidbits: Which 'Lost' Favorite Is Joining 'Once Upon A Time'? TV Tidbits: Spike Lee's Michael Jackson Doc Eyes Thanksgiving Premiere

The average actor earns peanuts compared to what the following group of Hollywood hot shots make, though their bloated salaries are not just handouts. Each and every person on the list below got where they are because of dedication to and love of their craft. Sure, luck plays an integral part, but without the drive to succeed they’d all be yesterdays news instead of next years busiest entertainers. Read on to see who you’ll be seeing a lot of in 2011.
*Note: This list is comprehensive, but not necessarily "complete" as there are many working actors in the business who have just as many, if not more, films in production. The individuals were selected because of their status in current pop-culture and the size of the films in which they appear. That is why someone like Ray Wise, who has 10 films in various stages of production, was excluded while others with less were included.*
Seth Rogen
Had I made this list last year, or the year before that, Rogen probably would’ve found himself on it. Since becoming a household name in 2007 with Knocked Up and Superbad (among others), the funny man has had more work than he knows what to do with. He starts 2011 with the eagerly awaited release of his 3D superhero flick The Green Hornet, but his cancer dramedy Live With It could hit the festival circuit around the same time. March will see his long-gestating collaboration with Simon Pegg/Nick Frost Paul hit theaters (in which he voices an adorable alien) followed by the May release of Kung Fu Panda 2. Somewhere in the middle of that will be another dramedy, Take This Waltz, in which he co-stars with Sarah Silverman and Michelle Williams. Add that up and Rogen’s got a very lucrative year ahead of him.
Emma Stone
Stone is poised to become the starlet of tomorrow with a leading role in Sony’s new Spider Man film, but that’s a ways off. Next year will see her build momentum towards that coming blockbuster with four releases, including a role in Relativity Media’s massive untitled ensemble comedy (which may now be titled Movie 43) and a reunion with her Easy A director Will Gluck in the Mila Kunis/Justin Timberlake rom-com Friends With Benefits. However, what I’m looking forward to most is The Help, an adaptation of Kathryn Stockett’s beloved novel in which she plays a leading role and Crazy, Stupid, Love, the new dramedy from I Love You Phillip Morris directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa in which she plays daughter to Steve Carell. There’s enough quality here to ensure that Stone becomes a major player in her own right in the new decade and I can’t wait to see what she does with all that star power in the coming years.
Steven Spielberg
The king of all media is back in full force next year, bringing no less than seven major motion pictures to global audiences in addition to one eagerly awaited new network TV show (Terra Nova – due May 2011). First up is the D.J. Caruso-helmed sci-fi actioner I Am Number Four followed by J.J. Abrams’ homage to the famed filmmaker’s early work with Super 8 (Spielberg serves as executive producer on both). The huge summer season continues with Transformers: Dark of the Moon and the very buzzy Cowboys &amp; Aliens before he unveils the Shawn Levy-directed robot boxing drama Real Steel. Then, around Christmastime, we’ll get a double dose of his directorial efforts with the WWI epic War Horse and the motion captured franchise starter The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn. That is the mark of a true mogul – releasing a pair of big films just days apart. Small potatoes for Mr. Spielberg, of course.
Johnny Depp
Captain Jack attacks the world of entertainment on all fronts next year as actor, producer and director. He’ll be seen in two films, including the long-delayed The Rum Diary and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, and heard in a third – Gore Verbinski’s animated Rango. He serves as producer on Martin Scorsese’s 3D live action Hugo Cabret and a foreign film called Cool Water (which may or may not end up shooting early next year). Additionally, he should finally release his untitled Keith Richards documentary, which has been in post-production for a long time now. It’s one of the most diverse schedules that anyone in the business can boast next year and I’m very excited to see how it all turns out for EW’s most recent Entertainer of the Decade.
Daniel Craig
Like Ms. Stone’s upcoming slate of films, Craig’s is comprised of higher quality than quantity. After a lengthy absence from the silver screen, the British bad ass releases four big movies from four big directors. He starts his domination of the second half of 2011 with Jon Favreau’s Cowboys and Aliens and segues into Jim Sheridan’s new thriller Dream House. After that, he’ll release back to back December blockbusters with the fore mentioned Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn and the mega-hyped English language adaptation of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. All together, Craig is looking at an easy billion-dollar year before he begins work on his third Bond film, due in 2012.
Ryan Kavanaugh
As I was compiling this list I realized that I wasn’t showing enough love to the producers that make filmmaking possible. There are hundreds of financiers and producers out there making movies, but none is quite as prolific today (and tomorrow) as Ryan Kavanaugh. The CEO of Relativity Media puts out a number of titles next year, some of which I’ve already mentioned (including that huge ensemble comedy, Cowboys and Aliens and Rogen’s Live With It). Additionally, he releases Neil Burger’s Limitless (formerly titled The Dark Fields), the James Cameron-produced Sanctum, Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire and Tarsem Singh’s Immortals. He’ll also be active in the realm of production as his company gears up for principle photography on The Town That Dreaded Sundown and The Crow remake. Like most big companies, Relativity could easily acquire a number of films for distribution throughout the year, which would just add to its already stellar slate in 2011.
Channing Tatum
The “It” Boy of the new decade is ready to take Hollywood by storm (again) next year. He’ll first appear in Ron Howard’s relationship comedy The Dilemma on January 14th before hitting Sundance in his third collaboration with director Dito Montiel with Son of No One. In February, his long delayed swords-and-sandals actioner The Eagle opens, while April will see Haywire finally blast its way into theaters. Tatum will only take very short breaks to promote these films as he’ll be working on a variety of projects including the ensemble drama Ten Year, the period espionage thriller Love and Honor and Sony’s 21 Jump Street reboot, ensuring that his It Boy status will remain intact for many years to come.
David Koechner
Here’s a guy that you wouldn’t think would end up on a list like this, but Koechner’s comedic abilities have made him a must have for productions big and small. The major studio’s called upon him for films like Paul, Final Destination 5 and This Means War (all set to bow in 2011) in addition to indies like Wish Wizard, Wedding Day and Fully Loaded, in which he apparently plays himself. It’s a big moment for the comedian, so I hope he and his fans drink it in.
Ron Perlman
The Sons Of Anarchy star gets his big-screen due next year with a whopping six (possibly seven) releases. He invades the first frame of 2011 with Season of the Witch and will play father to the Barbarian in Lionsgate’s Conan reboot in August. A number of other independent and studio releases will drop throughout the year as well, including Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, the dramatic thriller Crave and a film called Frankie Goes Boom that will reunite him with his SoA co-star Charlie Hunnam (Chris Noth, Lizzy Caplan and Whitney Cummings co-star). Perlman also joins Universal’s Mummy/Scorpion King franchise with the direct to DVD Scorpion King: Rise of the Dead. If it begins production on time, he could also release the action thriller The Riot, which presents a practical take on the survival horror genre. Factor in the tentative summer start of his old friend Guillermo del Toro’s At the Mountains of Madness (in which he plays Larson) and Perlman, at 60, is busier than ever.
Nicolas Cage
In between financial and psychological meltdowns Nicolas Cage manages to get some work done. The Oscar winning A-lister will appear in a quartet of films next year, starting with Season of the Witch and continuing on with Roger Donaldson’s The Hungry Rabbit Jumps, Patrick Lussier’s Drive Angry 3D and Joel Schumacher’s Trespass. In addition, he produced the family comedy A Thousand Words, which was developed as a starring vehicle but was passed off to Eddie Murphy shortly before production began in 2008. He’ll continue to shoot his Ghost Rider sequel through the first quarter of 2011 and may end up filming a third National Treasure at some point as well.
Michael Fassbender
He’s made a name for himself in films like 300 and Inglourious Basterds but Fassbender has yet to really breakout. Next year, he should do just that with four films locked and a handful of others gearing up for production. First is Cary Fukunaga’s adaptation of Charlotte Bronte’s literary staple Jane Eyre followed soon after by Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire. On June 3rd, he joins the X-Men franchise as a young Erik Lensherr/Magneto in X-Men: First Class, which could turn into a career-within-a-career in itself. Additionally, David Cronenberg’s highly anticipated A Dangerous Method should hit the festival circuit at some point in 2011, possibly leading to awards buzz. If you don’t think that is enough of a schedule to balance, try to figure out when/how he’ll shoot two new dramas (Brendan Gleeson’s At Swim-Two-Birds and Steve McQueen’s Shame) amidst all that promotional work? Staggering, isn’t it.

Freshly scrubbed Cannon as L.A. cop Tre Stokes solves crimes alongside straight-shooting boss Cpt. Victor Delgado (Cheech Marin). Cannon investigates a prep-school student's murder by enrolling at the school. The too-simple set-up for this dullish fish-out-of-water film leads to a frantic aimless goose chase of comedy/action in the disappointing tradition of say Bird on a Wire. Cannon ingratiates himself with the popular dudes as the wise-cracking basketball stud. He also strikes bizarre chords as a would-be teen who romances one of his teachers (Chasing Papi's Roselyn Sanchez). But the suspense really takes form when Cannon stumbles upon a car-theft ring and a drug ring um on the school newspaper's Web site. He also discovers his grown-up self in the process.
Cannon's got poppy charisma as a smooth-talker. In a smarter comedy Cannon could do damage. But the jokes in Underclassman are so utterly defanged so throwaway they're the edgy equivalent of suburban doctor's office banter. Harmless racial jokes are thrown in for easy spice while groaner after groaner is set up like Wiffleballs on a tee. X-Men 3's Shawn Ashmore who plays basketball team captain Rob Donovan slaps on the precise amount of detestable pretty-boy-ness. Marin long ago completed the transformation from '70s stoner; in 2005 he plays the gruff police chief with no patience. Supporting actors know and play their roles in this all-the-way-around big-studio movie.
The Underclassman for its critical failure bops along like a pop rock in a glass of Coke for the ADD teen generation. Dialogue is kept mercifully short so scenes are as interesting as they can be. But the comic sensibility is so off that nearly all audiences will feel alienated out of touch with the lame one-liners. All the conventions of Another Teen Movie are here: the elitist exclusion by the popular kids; the "stay in school" messages; the banging rap music; a villain named "Murdoch." The only thing missing is Samuel L. Jackson saying "I came to teach boys and you became men."

Planet of the Apes proved to be the 400 pound box office gorilla insiders anticipated, opening to nearly $70 million.
20th Century Fox's PG-13 sci-fi action adventure inspired by the studio's 1968 classic of the same name landed in first place with an out of this world record setting ESTIMATED $69.55 million at 3,500 theaters ($19,871 per theater).
Apes' average per theater was the highest for any film playing in wide or limited release this weekend.
Directed by Tim Burton and produced by Richard D. Zanuck, it stars Mark Wahlberg, Tim Roth, Helena Bonham Carter and Michael Clarke Duncan.
"This is as good as it gets," Fox distribution president Bruce Snyder said Sunday morning. "It's the best non-holiday weekend opening ever. Mummy Returns had that position at $68.139 million and we're going to blow past that with $69.55 million. It's the second best weekend (of any type) ever. Lost World: Jurassic Park's three day -- they had a four day of $90 million -- was $72.132 million. So we are the highest non-holiday and the second highest (for any weekend)."
An indication of the enormous expectations theater owners had for the film is that its theater count continued to rise right down to the wire. With a count of 3,494 theaters going into the weekend, Snyder said that as of Sunday morning, "It's actually 3,499. Call me crazy -- I'm calling it 3,500 now! They kept adding them. I swear, every time I saw (the total) it was like, here's another one."
Looking back, Snyder noted, "The original Apes from which the whole franchise sprang did $32.5 million (in its domestic theatrical run). I think we had that by noon yesterday!"
Asked why the new Apes has worked so well, Snyder replied "I think it's the concept. We're somewhat older audience-wise, so this isn't just about being driven by kids. This is being driven by you and I and 35-year-olds. Sixty-two percent (of those on hand opening weekend) were over 25 years of age. So we've still got some young people to get, which is terrific. That really bodes well."
Snyder did not have detailed exit poll data in hand yet early Sunday morning, but said, "I've just gotten it read to me over the phone and it played fabulously. It's a people picture."
Faced with the arrival of Apes, Universal and Amblin Entertainment's PG-13 rated action adventure fantasy sequel Jurassic Park III took a predictably sharp drop second weekend drop, falling one peg to second place with a still larger than life ESTIMATED $22.49 million (-56 percent) at 3,439 theaters (+5 theaters; $6,540 per theater). Its cume is approximately $124.8 million, heading for $175-200 million in domestic theaters.
Directed by Joe Johnston, JP III stars Sam Neill, William H. Macy, Tea Leoni, Alessandro Nivola, Trevor Morgan, Michael Jeter, John Diehl and Bruce A. Young.
Revolution Studios and Columbia Pictures' PG-13 rated romantic comedy America's Sweethearts slid one slot to third place in its second week with a still attractive ESTIMATED $15.7 million (-48 percent) at 3,011 theaters (theater count unchanged; $5,214 per theater). Its cume is approximately $59.4 million.
Directed by Joe Roth, it stars Julia Roberts, Billy Crystal, Catherine Zeta-Jones and John Cusack.
"Listen, in today's world down 48 percent is above average," Sony Pictures Entertainment worldwide marketing &amp; distribution president Jeff Blake said Sunday morning.
"We certainly would hope even better holds lay ahead. We have survived against two of the biggest openings in history (with Jurassic III and Apes) in the last two weeks. While Rush Hour 2 lays ahead, it's pretty different (in terms of core audience) and we would hope for even better holds ahead. But off a $30 million opening and what's been going on this summer (in terms of second weekend drops in the 50 percents), this is not bad at all. I think this still points us towards $100 million and that would be a very nice target to aim at."
MGM's PG-13 rated comedy hit Legally Blonde fell two rungs to fourth in its third week, still showing good legs with an ESTIMATED $9.0 million (-19 percent) at 2,725 theaters (+30 theaters; $3,304 per theater).
Blonde, which cost only $18 million to produce,has a cume of approximately $59.8 million and is on its way to a very profitable $75-80 million in domestic theaters.
Directed by Robert Luketic, the Marc Platt production stars Reese Witherspoon, Luke Wilson, Selma Blair, Matthew Davis, Victor Garber and Jennifer Coolidge with a special appearance by Raquel Welch.
Paramount's R rated crime drama The Score dropped two notches to fifth place in its third week with an okay ESTIMATED $7.3 million (-32 percent) at 2,211 theaters (+51 theaters; $3,305 per theater). Its cume is approximately $49.4 million.
Directed by Frank Oz, it stars Robert De Niro, Edward Norton, Angela Bassett and Marlon Brando.
Cats &amp; Dogs, the PG rated family appeal comedy from Warner Bros., Village Roadshow Pictures and NPV Entertainment, fell one peg to sixth place in its fourth week with a calm ESTIMATED $4.52 million (-34 percent) at 2,816 theaters (-224 theaters; $1,603 per theater). Its cume is approximately $81.5 million, heading for $100 million in domestic theaters.
20th Century Fox and Davis Entertainment's PG rated comedy sequel Dr. Dolittle 2 rose one notch to seventh place in its sixth week, holding very well with an ESTIMATED $4.18 million (-13 percent) at 2,190 theaters (-244 theaters; $1,906 per theater). Its cume is approximately $100.8 million, heading for $110 million in domestic theaters.
Directed by Steve Carr and produced by John Davis, it stars Eddie Murphy.
"We have a second piece of good news," Fox's Bruce Snyder said Sunday morning after talking about the studio's success with Apes. "Dr. Dolittle hit $100 million this weekend. It and Shrek were the only movies that were impervious to the [huge Apes] opening. We were only off 13 percent. I think we should scratch to $110 million."
Universal's PG-13 action drama The Fast and the Furious dipped two rungs to eighth place in its sixth week, still holding well with an ESTIMATED $3.78 million (-29 percent) at 2,415 theaters (-317 theaters; $1,565 per theater). Fast, which cost a modest $38 million, has a cume of approximately $132.2 million.
Directed by Rob Cohen and produced by Neal H. Moritz, it stars Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster.
Dimension Films' R rated horror film spoof sequel Scary Movie 2 fell two rungs to ninth place in its fourth week with a quiet ESTIMATED $2.6 million (-43 percent) at 2,179 theaters (-623 theaters; $1,193 per theater). Its cume is approximately $67.0 million, heading for $70 million in domestic theaters.
Directed by Keenen Ivory Wayans, it stars Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Christopher Masterson and Kathleen Robertson.
Rounding out the Top Ten was DreamWorks' PG rated computer animated blockbuster Shrek, up one notch in its 11th week and still showing good legs with an ESTIMATED $1.7 million (-24 percent) at 1,439 theaters (-112 theaters; $1,209 per theater). Its cume is approximately $255.5 million on its way to $260 million or more.
Directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, its voice talents include Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz and John Lithgow.
OTHER OPENINGS
This weekend also saw the arrival of USA Films' R rated comedy Wet Hot American Summer with a hopeful ESTIMATED $0.021 million at 2 theaters ($10,397 per theater).
Directed by David Wain, it stars Janeane Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce.
SNEAK PREVIEWS
Buena Vista/Disney held very well attended sneak previews at 1,150 theaters this weekend of its G rated family appeal comedy The Princess Diaries.
Directed by Garry Marshall, it stars Julie Andrews and Anne Hathaway.
Disney said Sunday morning that 45 percent of the theaters were sold out and the rest played to 80-90 percent of capacity. Those on hand covered the entire age spectrum and scored the film 91 percent in the Top Two Boxes (excellent and very good.)
Diaries opens wide this Friday (Aug. 3).
EXPANSIONS
On the expansion front, this weekend saw Artisan's R rated comedy Made widen in its third week with a still encouraging ESTIMATED $0.63 million at 195 theaters (+86 theaters; $6,005 per theater). Its cume is approximately $1.3 million.
Written and directed by Jon Favreau, it stars Favreau, Vince Vaughn, Sean Combs, Famke Janssen, Faizon Love and Peter Falk.
Miramax's R rated French comedy The Closet went wider in its fifth week with an okay ESTIMATED $0.37 million (+9 percent) at 98 theaters (+33 theaters; $3,775 per theater). Its cume is approximately $1.8 million.
Directed by Francis Veber, it stars Daniel Auteuil, Gerard Depardieu, Thierry Lhermitte and Michele Laroque.
Fox Searchlight's R rated critically acclaimed British crime thriller Sexy Beast added a few theaters in its seventh week, still holding well with an ESTIMATED $0.34 million (-17 percent) at 193 theaters (+5 theaters; $1,780 per theater). Its cume is approximately $5.1 million.
Directed by Jonathan Glazer, it stars Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley.
Lions Gate Films' PG-13 rated drama Songcatcher continued to widen in its seventh week with a soft ESTIMATED $0.18 million (-19 percent) at 104 theaters (+13 theaters; $1,750 per theater). Its cume is approximately $1.6 million.
Directed by Maggie Greenwald, it stars Janet McTeer and Aidan Quinn.
MGM's release of United Artists' R rated youth appeal comedy Ghost World widened in its second week with a lively ESTIMATED $0.13 million (+29 percent) at 8 theaters (+3 theaters; $16,000 per theater) in Los Angeles, New York and Seattle. Its cume is approximately $0.3 million.
Directed by Terry Zwigoff, it stars Thora Birch, Scarlett Johansson, Brad Renfro, Illeana Douglas and Steve Buscemi.
MGM said that this Friday (Aug. 3) Ghost will add 7 more markets and 14 theaters, bringing its total for the weekend to 22 theaters and 10 markets.
Fine Line Features' R rated rock musical drama Hedwig and the Angry Inch added a few theaters in its second week with a still hopeful ESTIMATED $0.11 million (-30 percent) at 11 theaters (+2 theaters; $9,924 per theater). Its cume is approximately $0.4 million.
Directed by John Cameron Mitchell, who also wrote adapted his hit Off-Broadway play to the screen, Hedwig stars Mitchell in its title role.
WEEKEND COMPARISONS
Key films -- those grossing more than $500,000 -- took in approximately $148.47 million, up about 18.04 percent from the comparable weekend last year when key films grossed $125.78 million.
This weekend's key film gross was up about 5.86 percent from last weekend this year when key films took in $140.24 million.
Last year, Universal's opening week of Nutty Professor II: The Klumps was first with $42.52 million at 3,242 theaters ($13,115 per theater); and DreamWorks' second week of What Lies Beneath was second with $22.86 million at 2,825 theaters ($8,093 per theater). The top two films one year ago grossed $65.4 million. This year, the top two films grossed an ESTIMATED $92.1 million.